Two poems by John Alter

Old man you offer me the gift

Old man you offer me the gift of

recurrence the way the wind through the

curtains brings with it tonight the fragrance

of kites as if in some library a

blind poet is moving the pages of 

a beloved book     that is you      we watched

your eyes turn away from us at the end

of your days with us     you were bored already

with that nonsense about a king and

a one-eyed man     with all the nonsense of

moderation     and sometimes only we 

heard you speak to us from where you are now 

Prayer Flag, Deodar

The first pale light of a new day

at the windows like water-color.  I

understand why these trees insisted that

we associate them with the gods.

Prayer

began as

a tree, on a morning like this

the first pale light at the windows

like water-color,

on the edge of a mountain

where, swaddled in mist, the gods

are born

and prayer thrusting itself

up out of the muddled mind.

Before and beyond words

the mind is a mountain where

gods are born.

A small breeze moves

in the branches.  Somebody has hung

a prayer flag there, the words obliterated

by mist.

2.

A prayer flag begins

with legible words from

the sutra

a man can read,

each syllable clear.  He

knows the words by heart.

And the words

flutter then in the morning

light,

alone for the first time.  Mist

enters the

household of syllables.  Slowly

the walls will dissolve,

the furniture of meaning.

The prayer flag

remembers a man reading

the words by heart and the man is

like a dream, he

dissolves in the mist, and the prayer flag

turns now

to the wind… 

Poem by John Alter

Etymology
The angels in heaven
those who wear pearls and
vintage blazers gossip in Latin and know that when you add the suffix
-ous
to a word it means full of when they heard
the good news of your arrival
it is reported exclaimed one to the other

good gracious
have mercy

The angels in heaven
those who love to walk
from one end to the other of their home town
& carry
in celestial bags all that a good day requires
when they heard the good news of your arrival
exclaimed

good gracious
have mercy

For us who remain here
with our forlorn dictionaries
with the streets of our home town that seem
less inhabited
who are clearly not angels
what remains to some measure is what
you taught us

love’s etymology
how by adding the prefix com-
to the word passion
you discover a compassionate universe
how by replacing the prefix con-
with trans- you discover
love’s transformative power

O our need remains also
for those angels who insist on wearing
pearls
even when the only task at hand is to
rake the fallen leaves who know what it means to
say
vir bonum semper discipilus est

--for Margaret Addicks

Poems by John Alter

Rainy weather

Crowded with wet trees

each wearing as many badges & tags

as the suitcase of

a vagabond and

with a soaking rain

the path makes its way

through a junkyard. We

take so much for granted. The rain—the company

of trees—the wrecked automobiles.

And I

am here in this tree

house longing to be

long as the trees like

refugees for a moment in the early

afternoon pause and

I with them catching

our breath. O leafy

cousins I want to

call out to them and

to believe that the intricate display

of branches is some

how intended to

tell me a story.

October 4

Beyond this horizon of bare branches

today is coming off the press, scandalous

colloquial

offering its good news to anybody

I can turn its pages

read, in my own tongue

the lyrical ballad

Let the high priests—

let the captains of industry—

do what they will

2.

I ride my toy donkey out under

a sky cluttered with satellites

Once

there was only one, do you

remember, and it spoke Russian

3.

Anne Sexton—

you wrapped your bones up

in that old mink coat—took a last

long swallow of whatever drink you

could find—

and drove yourself to where death

always the gentleman, waited

stylish cigarette in one hand,

your life work in the other

Poems by John Alter

The Ides of March

I am not much of a gardener. When

the ice breaks up on the lake I am not

the first to launch my canoe. Nature’s first

gold is not gathered by my eyes or hands.

I live through this change of seasons. A box

of last year’s potting soil patiently waits

for something—seeds, sunshine, rain—outside my

door. Somewhere in the attic paddles wait,

doggedly refusing to change into

something more relevant to who I am.

My thumb is not green, fertilizer does

not stain my fingers. What worms may do does

not provide me with reasons to go out.

I am neither mammal nor plant enough.

Listening to Stormy Weather, on Your Birthday

The nurses put a ribbon in your hair

before they showed you to your mother. Last

year a ribbon of snow on the far peaks

of Himalaya marked your eighty-

seventh birthday. Today, eighty-eight, you

pray in the midst of your life’s hallowed

clutter. Somewhere that first ribbon waits. We

could walk to your mother’s grave today, care-

fully, the sidewalks icy. Snow lasts in

the photograph hanging on your bedroom

wall—a ribbon of snow on the far peaks.

Avoid Commentary

Avoid commentary.

Life is not a sporting event, much of the time, and

even if it is that, a sporting event

let me watch it in peace, drawing my own conclusions, or

gently,

respectful of what it takes to observe, point out

what strikes you as interesting—if I ask,

explain,

if I turn you on, speak until I am tired of your speaking.

—thanks to John for sharing his work with Green Hill! click here to see more

Ghalib: apostrophe and translations by John and Tom Alter

Ghalib

Whose passion for writing

implores? The painting dresses in paper.

Loneliness is painful.

Night: a river of milk.

Passion: untamed power.

Sharp, lethal, the sword pierces its own heart.

Understanding: a net.

Truth is an uncaught bird.

In prison, Ghalib, feet

braceleted with fire –Chains: braids of fine flame.

*

Fate: separation from

the Beloved forever.

Survival is an untrue promise. Truth

would kill me happily.

Frail as the wrists of my beloved, her

promise—easily broken, torn apart.

Half-hearted your arrow

has pierced my heart. Straightforward, there would be no pain.

My friends replace friendship

with lectures. My sorrow: gossip.

If your sorrow had truly burned,

stones would bleed endless blood.

If sorrow destroys life

love’s sorrow destroys hope.

Love’s insomnia is

torture. Forbidden, the solace of dreams.

Last night I drowned the sea.

Grave and funeral: never, nothing.

Neither my funeral would have been, nor my grave would there be!

Who can gaze upon the beloved? There is one, only one –

If there were even a scent of another, then so many would appear

Oh, Ghalib! Your allegories, your wisdom, the wonder of your speech!

We would consider you most holy – if only you did not drink!

Ek ek qatra

Of each drop I had to give an account –

The blood of my heart and my beloved’s tears are one

Now there is only I, and the mourning of a lost city of desires –

For you have broken that mirror which held the wonder of your beauty

Drag my dead body through the winding streets,

For I always gave my life to the wandering ways of the wind

Oh, do not ask of each mirage’s wave on the desert of faithfulness –

Every grain of sand, like jewels on a sword, shimmers and glimmers

So little I also knew of love’s sorrows, but now,

Having known them, they have lessened, but not the sorrows of life –

Na tha kuch

When there was nothing, there was god –

If nothing had happened, god would have been

I have drowned only because I was –

If I had not happened, than what would have happened?

In sorrow my head had become lifeless, so now what sorrow if I am beheaded?

Even if not cut off from my body, it lay dead upon my knee –

Ghalib left us so long, long ago – but yet we remember –

His special way of saying – “if this had happened, than what would have happened!”

Daim para hua

I am not going to prostrate myself at your doorstep forever –

To hell with such a life, I am not some god-forsaken stone

Why should my heart not quake before eternity’s endless turning?

I am a mere man – not some goblet filled with wine!

Oh, god! Why does the world wish to erase me forever?

I am not the letters of fate inscribed upon the tablet of life!

There should be a limit to the punishment given out for sinning!

After all, I am only a sinner, not an infidel!

Why was I never considered precious?

Because I am not a gem, nor pearl, nor gold, nor diamond?

Why do you walk so sadly before my eyes?

I am not less than any sun, any moon!

Why do you refuse to kiss my feet?

Am I any less than the very sky?

Ghalib, you are a mere pensioner, give prayers for the king –

Long gone are those days when you proclaimed – “I am nobody’s servant!”

Dil-e-nadaan

Oh, my innocent heart, what is tormenting you?

Is there any cure for this relentless pain?

We are waiting, pining – and the beloved is so restless!

Oh, lord, what a strange, strange tale this is!

Even I have a tongue in my humble mouth –

Ah! if only you would ask, “what do you wish to say?”

If without you – except for you -- nobody can be present –

Then, oh god – why this commotion, why all these people?

How are there these angelic ones here?

Such delicate, such fine manners – what are they?

Why the thread so true in a lock of amber hair?

What is the look from her kohl-darkened eye?

From where have the plants and the flowers come?

What is a cloud? What is the wind?

We long for faithfulness from the beloved –

Who does not even know what faithfulness is!

“Yes! Do good unto others, and good will be done unto you!”

What else is the meaning of the dervish’s cry?

I have sacrificed my life for you –

Before this, what is prayer?

I have learned that if nothing, Ghalib –

Comes to hand free, than what is wrong?

Rahiye ab aisi jagah chalkar –

Go and live – now—all alone – in that place where no one else lives –

No one to speak with, no one to understand your words –

A house with no door, no walls – ah!

No companion, no watchman – nobody –

If you fall ill, no one will enquire after your health –

And if you die, no one will mourn your going –

Hazaaron khwahishien aiseen

Thousands of desires, and for each one I would give my life –

So much that I desired did happen, and – yet – I desire so much more.

Why is my murderer frightened? No blame will come upon him --

For taking my blood, which, drop by drop, has fallen forever from my weeping eyes –

We always heard about Adam leaving paradise – but –

With what shame did I leave the gully in which you live

The secret of your great height will be revealed, you devil –

If all the twistings and turnings of your twisting and turning hair should unravel

If someone wants to have a letter written to the beloved, than ask me –

Every morning I leave the house with a pen nestled behind my ear

I am the one whose name stands for true drinking in today’s age –

One again, the era has returned when the ‘elixir of life’ can be enjoyed!

The person from whom I expected praise for my poverty –

He has become even more impoverished by the sword of injustice

In love, there is no difference between living and dying –

I live only to see the beloved, for whom I am willing to die

Where the door of the tavern, ghalib, and where the holy man?

But one thing is for sure – yesterday, as I was leaving, he was entering!

Koi din gar zindagi aur hai –

If life goes on much longer, I have something quite different in mind –

The fires of hell are not nearly so hot – the heat of sorrow is truly unbearable.

I have seen, so many times, their worries and woes – but, this time, the sorrow is so much deeper –

The messenger waits so eagerly, having delivered the letter – a message spoken is always so much more beautiful –

The stars in the heavens are always so final in their judgment – that heavenly curse is not of this world –

All the travails of this world are over, Ghalib –

Only the suddenness of death remains --

Many thanks to John and Tom Alter for sharing with us their translations from the Urdu of poet Mirza Ghalib(1797-1869).

Poem by John Alter

Yawn: a somewhat inadequate translation

whoever invented the yawn or
if it came into this world with us
from that other where lions sprawl

on sunwarmed stone no
matter he or she or they deserve
something

a cup of leftover coffee
a magazine about a war that no longer
goes on although the world to be sure

goes on being bloody and
tonight is going on like a man hired to
edit and revise a manuscript written

by somebody who
has by now drifted off into sleep or
lies beneath a comforter of moon-chilled

stone
he earns very little this editor this
translator

*
The translation—

Yawn…eyes burning,
I am dropping slowly down through
A trapdoor
Into eternity…drift

The pawn has something to say
To the King…

The page of today is turning
Into the beginning of the next chapter
& through-

Out there is the odor of burning
Bridges

What is more,
Eternity will take the next shift…
What can I say?
Partaking as I do in the ritual burning
Of books—

A raptor lands
On the telephone wire

translation becomes the dragon

There was a very good turnout for an inspiring talk by translator and poet David Hinton at the Gunn Memorial Library today. Thank you to the participating members of the Translation Club, Chao Liu, Yuze Sun, Millie Huang, and Danny Zoldy, as well as Patricia and Edwin Matthews, John Alter, Paula Krimsky, Karen Lincoln, and Eileen Aguirre. Wondering what the post title is all about? Look for an article here soon by Corey Tesch, reporting for the Gunnery News/Highlander.

Poem by John Alter

Raven

As if, in an old house, there is a closet
which you open, almost by mistake

A raven, tall as a priest
and dressed in whatever clothes he could
find

in the closet, a suit from some other
century, black shoes polished
like mirrors,
gaudy suspenders,
a top hat

steps out

Without hesitation he creates
by opening his vast wings
a space large enough for the mountains
to form
the valleys
the farms with their many terraces
nomads and barking deer and the octave
owl

When his wings close again
when you are left with the glint of his
eyes
the perfect satire of his shoes
when the octave owl is still and the barking deer
lay down on pillows of new grass to sleep
the nomads crawl into the suburbs
terraces revert to forest

then
with a wink of his eye
and the tapping of his impeccable shoes
you are alone
on the rocky hill at sunrise
morning crows opening their wings to the dawn
like prayer flags

You pray, you sing a song, you fall in love

Uttaranchal

Poem by John Alter

Apricot

You left behind an apricot tree
in the garden outside a house in which
your bride is preparing for her guests
a simple meal of hand-rolled bread

some vegetables and relish made
from that same tree. They sit
on the verandah watching a monkey
climb and remembering, each

in his or her own way, what you
once were to each. It is early afternoon.
Down by the small river where you
walked a leopard is sleeping.

The leopard, the monkey, the bride
are dead. Only the small river lingers.

--for Eric and Sona Bailey

for more poems by John, click here.

Poem by John Alter

Pray tell

Pray
tell, let little words swim through this net,

let crepuscular crawfish
crawl through, each

with a
tiny sword & the red badge—pray

for
a measure of peace, not this beating

of
ploughshares into swords, this rough weather,

not this shit, not this raw
rough cheating, these

words
of tin—pray for an affirmation

& not this
nitpicking; a firm footing

&
not these huge cracks in the pavement. Pray.

*

I search the library shelves
for poems

written about or
during aerial

bombardments.
Badly disorganized as

if Dewey had
lost his temper or his

mind.
Intelligence-seeking missiles will

do that
to a bibliotheque. Books burn.

I reach a place where
only the bottom

of a
perpendicular consonant

remains intact. A young
boy wanders through

the rubble, dragging
Thelonius Monk

along in a
red wagon; they whistle

Crepuscule with Nellie
together. The

ensemble assembles.
Some minor keys,

the body of the bass like a
coffin,

a voiceless saxophone,
Art Blakey drums

on what remains of what may once
haye been.

William Blake
is the bloke who shuffles

into
the picture, holding in his hands

what little remains of
the important

questions. If
you must know, he says, it is

only partially like a game
of

scrabble; you must use
your mind like a pitch-

fork,
throw out the old verities, then find

somebody to whom
you can give ashes

of what has not
been imported; forget

what I
have said before about thought &

volition. The
ensemble plays Abide

with
Me as their answer. Smart bombs whistle.

*

I used to play the drums
after I failed

to master the classical piano.

What remains
is my affection for Art

Blakey.
I have been known to hear drumming

in the cascade of
waterfalling on

rock. To hear Well, You Needn’t
underscore

the song of early morning birds today.

*

It is
attentive today. Trees, water,

the place where
famous writers congregate

when they are
dead. A library of rock.

*

Allow me to
underscore that point. Pine

tree
growing up out of granite boulder.



John read this poem, from his book, Hanuman's Home, at the gathering tonight in the Reading Room. Join us there for informal readings on Monday the 13th and the 20th, from 6 to 7.

John Alter's new book of poetry is out

Translation

He turns the corner, at last, that brings him
to the land of translation. Three small steps
bring him down to where Alice-in-Wonder-
­land waits, who is now an old lady whose

stories are like an elderly rabbit.
No—she is older than that, now, and he
later; what he finds—a boot with buttons,
desiccated mushroom pieces, a door

so small he mistakes it for a playing
card—and what he hears—forlorn, a small wind
blowing... these things he can gather up and
bring back, but here, in this gentle garden

he finds no way back; the three steps loom now,
larger and earlier, and he sits down.


Many readers of this blog already know John Alter, and at least some of his poetry; they may have even heard him read his work at a Coffee House or on another occasion. There is now a selection of his poems available from Xlibris, entitled Hanuman’s Home; it is filled with verse that John has produced while living in Washington, CT for the past few years. The poem above immediately struck a chord with me; in the case of poems with references to India (where John was born and raised) and Hinduism, I’m more like an avid tourist − one leaning forward into the page, transported by the visions woven there. After having had the book here for several days, I can say that both the un- & the already-initiated are in luck, because the pleasures of reading these poems are many, and grow with each return to the page.

As I was beginning to read, or reread, the poems of Hanuman’s Home, I was also rediscovering the Mark Strand essay “Translation,” in Strand’s entertaining book of essays The Weather of Words (2000). Toward the end of this short essay, Strand has the apparition of Borges say to his poet-narrator: “It is you who must be translated…” – which is not, the reader understands, to disavow the multiple ‘problems of translation’ the essay veils in fictive translators who pop up in the unlikeliest of places and persons, beginning with the narrator’s four-year-old son, who (unbeknownst to the Strand-narrator) has been translating Palazzeschi – and encountering some difficulty, to which the son (four years old, I repeat) admits with an amusingly erudite admixture of shame and resentment. I read this essay when the book came out, and subsequently forgot about that oddball choice of Italian poet; now that I’ve been translating Palazzeschi myself, and somewhat inevitably thinking about translation & the myriad opinions written about it, my rediscovery of this essay brings with it an admixture of glee, identification, and embarrassment.

In any case, the Borges apparition confirms the Strand narrator’s surmise that translation should be thought of as “a transaction between individual idioms, between say the Italian of D’Annunzio and the English of Auden” − a notion that obviates or renders “irrelevant discussions of who has and who hasn’t done a correct translation.” Such a comment neatly curtails all debate, at least for the time being, and in fact the essay swiftly vanishes, along with Borges’s ghost. A plain-language sequential summary of this essay's implications might look like this: translation begins at home; its issues manifest themselves regularly in familiar (even literally members of the family) ways; disagreements and divisions will occur regarding translation choices; the imaginative work itself is elastic enough to handle all of this (i.e. the Kundera-esque narrative, in which the characters voice a broad range of opinions on the matter of whether translation is possible).

Anyway, John's book, and the poem above, got me thinking of these matters in a committed, but concentrated manner ("and he sits down"). Coincidentally, the other day John handed me a CD of Borges lectures from the 60’s that is truly transporting, to the point that I am convinced I was there, or that I heard Borges speak at some point, although the first is impossible and the second is probably a memory malfunction. In any event, all of these circumstances are at least reminders of the recurrence of the ineffable appearing in distinct yet fantastic forms. For me, John’s poem above operates like a fairytale equivalent, a metaphorical treatment of existential (life as translation) quandaries. I think of the three steps as stages in the work of translation, but the metaphor broadens as its language becomes more precise. This magic is typical of the poems in Hanuman’s Home – their scope emerges from their particulars and the subjectivity of the narrative, an only apparent paradox that will certainly be familiar to readers of poetry (I think of Whitman first of all). Most of the poems are more explicitly tied to time and place than the one quoted above, and some address religious and secular existential matters more explicitly. In one of his lectures Borges says "We all must put up with the mythology of our times," by which he meant not so much to dismiss it as to opine its poverty relative to the imaginative and conceptual wealth of other mythologies, of other times. In these poems, John calls on a wider world of meaning and association without stretching, and without ever distancing the reader. ‘Shantih shantih shantih,’ for example, commemorates and meditates on 9/11; others were written for family members, or on occasions of special import for the family, and others meditate on the meanings of rituals of the religious calendar, like ‘Advent, Ramadan.’

When you engage in a reading of this book, you begin a dialogue with an author whose presence is as unmistakable and generous in the poems as it has been in our midst for the past several years. It’s my hope that we’ll have a couple more (and lengthier) poems from Hanuman’s Home on the blog in the coming weeks, with comments from other readers and admirers of John’s poetry.

Poem by John Alter

Sum, some, Somme

He didn’t stand a
Prayer.
What in the mind is
Like fallen leaves,
Thousands
In a day, a kind of
Antietam,
I don’t remember
Well. Walking at odd ends
We came across
Stairs
Leading down to what
Once had been a
Graveyard, I think. Life
Shuts the book. Turns off
The microphone. Who’s keeping
Track of numbers anyhow?
58,000 British soldiers,
Battle of the Somme,
Some kind of single day record.